As world population grows and habitable land remains fixed within urban areas, buildings are becoming taller. Firefighting in high-rise residential and commercial structures pose special challenges, and success invariably depends on the ready availability of water in the building's standpipe systems: the pipes and plumbing that are designed to provide firefighters with a reliable source of high pressure water supply for fighting a blaze inside the structure of the building.
A typical standpipe system begins with an automatic water supply, typically city main and fire pumps, or gravity-based water tanks located on the roof. At the street level there are water pipe connections for the local fire department to tap into, commonly known as the “Siamese.” The Siamese connections in turn connect to pipes that run vertically and/or horizontally inside the building, and this interconnected web of plumbing eventually runs to the top of the building, and is collectively referred to as the standpipe system. A standpipe may be pressurized with water (“wet”) or remain “dry” until activated in an emergency; supplied either from a fire hydrant attachment or from a pump such as a fire engine's onboard pump. Therefore standpipes are also sometimes known as “wet risers” and “dry risers” in some countries (e.g., the UK). The vertical standpipes, often painted red, are typically exposed in a building's stairwells, and there are outlet valves on each floor of the building to which firefighters can attach hoses. Water, and water pressure, is typically supplied by the city fire department. When there is a fire in a building equipped with a standpipe system, the first fire engine to arrive usually connects a hose to the nearest hydrant, and another hose to the Siamese connection in front of the building. The fire and building codes designate the number of Siamese connections required; typically about every 300 feet of building frontage requires at least one Siamese connection, and there is usually a Siamese connection for every street side on which the building has frontage space. The pump from the fire engine boosts the pressure of the water being fed from the hydrant to the Siamese connection and then to the vertical standpipe. If the building has two or more nonadjacent stairwells, each one usually has its own standpipe. The standpipes are typically all supplied with water from the same master pipe connected to the Siamese(s), so that once a fire engine is connected to the Siamese and reliably supplying it with water, firefighters can tap into any part of the standpipe network in the building to combat the fire.
A firefighting operation would be ineffective without an operational standpipe system, especially in high rise buildings and other complex structures. Without the standpipe system, the imposing height and/or large area of a structure offer only limited access by fire engines and hoses. The amount of water required to extinguish large fires in large buildings may exceed the capacity of the building's primary system, roof tanks and/or city mains, and therefore these should be augmented with pressurized water supply from fire engine(s) connected on one side to the building's standpipe system, and on the other side to another source, such as a street fire hydrant. Further, standpipe risers are increasingly used in combination with the building's emergency water sprinkler system. Failure of the standpipe riser can thus cause loss of water to the sprinkler system, thereby leading to increased risk of damage and injury. Building codes have, historically speaking, allowed for increased floor areas only because of the promise of a working sprinkler system. For example, trader floors in the New York financial district are now allowed to increase open space without limits provided they have sprinklers installed, as opposed to earlier building codes that restricted open floor space to 7,500 ft.2 As a result of the new codes, the loss of the sprinklers can lead to larger uncontained fires in the larger floor areas, since there is less compartmentation from room/building walls to break or contain the fire. Such uncontrolled and free burning fires in high-rise buildings may cause abandonment of fire/rescue activities because of the fear of structural collapse of the building, and are among the most serious emergencies a fire department can attempt to mitigate. Thus, an operational standpipe system is absolutely mission-critical to fire safety.
Since firefighters rely on the standpipe system to be operable during fires and emergencies, many cities have codes and ordinances requiring maintenance of these systems in working condition. In New York City, standpipes are now mandated by code in all residential and commercial high-rises, hospitals, schools, enclosed malls, theatres, stadiums, bridges and tunnels, railway stations and the like. New York City standpipe systems must be pressure tested every five years, inspected monthly, and a record of such inspections kept by a person holding a certificate of fitness issued by the Fire Department of New York (“FDNY”). Compliance is taken so seriously that if a system is found to be out of service during working hours, the FDNY has the authority to issue a “vacate order” or mandate a “watchman's service” for the building. The watchman service requires a trained watchman to patrol all floors to detect an incipient fire, and the owner of the building will be required to pay for the cost of the Watchman system, plus fines, as an added incentive to ensure that standpipes are operational. While these legal preventive measures provide reasonable remedies to prevent standpipe systems from being compromised by either benign neglect or the negligence of building owners, they simply cannot prevent against accidents, natural disasters or intentional attacks.
Standpipe systems have been compromised both by natural causes (e.g., earthquakes), accidents, and more recently, by the rise of malignant sabotage and terrorism. Recent catastrophes, such as the World Trade Center and Pentagon explosions on Sep. 11, 2001, or the Deutsche Bank Fire on Aug. 18, 2007, have vividly shown what happens when a standpipe system is compromised. The firefighters are unable to get access to water in the upper levels of the building and are unable to repair the standpipe systems in a timely manner. As a result, many victims had no way out of the upper floors of these burning buildings, due to blocked and unprotected exits, and severed standpipe systems. Firefighters were also trapped above the fire with no water in their hoses.
Increasing the frequency of standpipe inspections, or increasing penalties for non-compliance with code requirements, also cannot ensure operating standpipes during an emergency. In this age of terrorism, faceless enemy combatants could target standpipes in their attacks. Since it is known that standpipes are critical to firefighters, enemy combatants could mount a devastating attack that seek to destroy not only a target floor(s), but also a section of the standpipe system below the target floor. A small amount of explosive placed on a standpipe riser would, unfortunately, easily sever the pipe and place the system out of service. Thus, for instance, there may be two planned explosions, one involving, say, a large explosion and fire on the 40th floor, and a near-simultaneous smaller explosion by a secondary device, in the stairwell of, say, the 15th floor to destroy the standpipe system.
In smaller buildings of less than five stories it may be possible for the fire fighters to connect extensions upon extensions to their standard issue fire hoses (typically 50′ in length in New York City), and then run up the stairs to provide water at the location where the standpipe is broken. This can still be a time consuming process and a real distraction during an emergency. However, these stopgaps simply will not work in taller buildings. Having fire fighters run up ten or more stories connecting and extending hoses during a time of extreme emergency, when smoke, screams and panic fill the air of a maze-like skyscraper, is just impractical. Further, these stairways are usually cramped for space and primarily designed for egress, and any obstacles placed in the way of people running out in panic may further compromise a dire situation.
There has never been any planning or preparation done to handle such standpipe emergency situations, nor is there now. The FDNY, the largest fire department in the world, does not have specialized parts or equipment or established methods to quickly and effectively repair a damaged standpipe system, nor does any other fire department in the world known to the fire service community. The National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH), after its review of the Deutsche Bank Fire, made the following recommendation in August, 2010: To prepare for similar water supply issues, fire departments also need to “develop and enforce standard operating procedures to establish an alternate water supply when a high-rise building's standpipe system is inoperable.” While the problem has been identified, there does not appear to be any known, publicly available, solution.
No existing methods or procedures currently followed by fire departments address the abovementioned problem. Many fire department manuals, as part of their existing standard operating procedure(s) (hereafter “SOP”), specify standpipe operations and a standpipe kit. See for instance: FIRE DEPARTMENT OF NEW YORK, Standpipe Operations, DCN:4.05.04, Engine Company Operations, Chapter 9, pp 1-9, Mar. 15, 1997 (“FDNY Manual”). However, existing SOPs focus on the task of ensuring that the fire engine is properly connected to the Siamese and building standpipe system ensuring a flow of water from the fire engine to the building. In other words, the focus of existing SOPs is external to the building; there is no SOP or pre-defined or pre-positioned kit for dealing with a non-functional or damaged standpipe inside the burning building or structure. For example, in the FDNY Manual, various types of standpipe systems and troubleshooting of typical standpipe operating issues during a fire emergency are discussed in detail. These issues include difficulties encountered with Siamese connections because of missing caps, defective threads, debris stuffed into the connection by vandals, tight caps, female swivels out-of-round, frozen female swivels, and clappers either broken or jammed open. Common operating gaffes that can cause standpipe systems to appear to malfunction—such as not ensuring that the line is charged and bled before entering the fire area, or having water blockages caused by hoses tied up in knots, or not ensuring that the pressure regulating devices (“PRDs”) are either removed or fully opened—are discussed with appropriate solutions. A standpipe kit for addressing these types of issues that is external to the building is recommended by the FDNY and consists of the following: 2.5″ controlling nozzle with 1.125″ main stream tip and 0.5″ outer stream tip; Hand control wheel(s) for outlet valve; 2.5″×2.5″ in-line pressure gauge; Pipe wrench that is at least 18″ in length; Spanner wrenches; Door chocks; Special adapters such as those for connecting FDNY 2.5″ hose to National Standard Thread or National Pipe Thread; and four lengths of folded 2.5″ hose. However, there is no discussion anywhere in this FDNY manual/SOP of a method or kit for finding and/or repairing a damaged, blocked or otherwise sabotaged standpipe within the building during a fire emergency.
In light of the above reasons, there exists a significant and unmet need during fire emergencies for a real-time, dynamic, flexible, fast and systematic procedure to rapidly troubleshoot the cause of the lack of water supply, establish that it is in fact caused by a damaged or missing standpipe section(s), find the specific location where the standpipe(s) is compromised, and then, at least temporarily, fix the problem in the shortest time possible to secure water and extinguish the fire and/or to protect the occupants as they exit the building. A review of the prior art discussed below also indicates that there is simply no specific kit or repair system available today, or can be borrowed from other fields, to solve this urgent and very specific problem.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,731,041 and 2,756,779 discuss bypass assemblies for repairing, without replacement, a leaky section of a gas or water service pipe conducting fluid from a street main into a building. These patents focus on designing and implementing a built-in bypass system for the specific section where the service pipe is most likely to corrode and leak. The location of this anticipated leak is pre-determined and configured with fittings, so that when the leak occurs it is easy to set up the bypass system. However, this approach will not work for standpipe systems in fire emergencies for several reasons. First, no one can even pretend to predict which building, or which section of the standpipe within the building, would be damaged in an as yet undetermined fire emergency at an undetermined location. Therefore, if this method were to be practiced by firefighters, it would become necessary to build a bypass for the entire standpipe system in a high rise building, and do this for every high rise in the city—which is impractical for cost, space and convenience reasons. Second, even if such a backup system is built, it is also likely to be near the first system, and there is no guarantee that an explosion will not damage both the original system and the bypass.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,058,620 and 5,052,431 discuss a method of repairing gas pipelines which contain gas under pressure by using a complex and specialized tool to bore two holes on either side of the gas leak, creating a temporary bypass until the leak is fixed. This approach would unfortunately be too complex and time consuming to use during a life threatening fire catastrophe where time is of the utmost essence.
While the timing of any emergency is unpredictable, it is possible to prepare for them by having specialized emergency kits that handily and uniquely organize a custom collection of known components that stand ready and waiting for the time of urgent need. First aid kits and earthquake emergency kits for personal and household use are common, and many of them innovative enough to be patented. U.S. Pat. No. 5,515,974 discusses a convenient household emergency and security kit containing an array of articles such as flashlights, first aid, fire-extinguisher, and the like. There are also specialized kits that have been developed and patented for professional use, especially medicine. U.S. Pat. No. RE38,597 teaches an “IV Prep Kit” that holding essential medical devices and accessories for quickly and conveniently securing a medical device to a patient's skin or to a support during an outpatient procedure or hospital surgery. As discussed earlier with reference to the FDNY procedures, there are basic standpipe kits in the firefighter trade to fix minor issues in the standpipes that are external to the building, but there is no specialized kit available for quick and convenient emergency repair of standpipes within burning buildings.
In conclusion, there is no known procedure or method available to professional firefighters that can be used, during a fire emergency, to quickly, efficiently and systematically identify if the burning building's standpipe system has been internally damaged, blocked, sabotaged or compromised in any way. Further, even if the firefighter happens to find the location of a damaged or blocked standpipe by a visual inspection, the firefighter still has no easy and convenient method, nor a customized handy emergency kit, to quickly resolve the problem and focus on the job of putting out the fire as quickly as possible and saving lives.